


A Tragedy In Two Acts

by ice_hot_13



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:46:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezio returns from Roma to find that he has no idea where Leonardo is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I

Leonardo is gone.

Ezio can't admit it to himself fully, hasn't even considered the possibility for the past few days. It's denial like a lifesaving technique, frantic and desperate, and performed again and again, long after it could have helped. He returned from Rome to find that, for the first time in such a long time, that he has no idea where Leonardo is. Ezio doesn't pause to think of anything else, doesn't linger over how _wrong_ that is, so wrong it's glaringly obvious, wrong like the sun rising at midnight, and goes straight to Leonardo's workshop in Venezia.

 _He's here, of course,_ Ezio thinks, and keeping himself from sprinting to the workshop is a struggle.  _Why wouldn't he be here? There's no reason to be worried._ No reason to be worried, except he doesn't know where Leonardo is, and the thought makes his breathing sharp and erratic, makes him tense and closer to scared than he's ever been.

The workshop door is locked. The workshop is closed up and vacant, and Ezio tries the door handle again, as if it will miraculously unlock and he will find Leonardo within. The handle jams up at his attempts, and a careful circling of the building, prey circling a slumbering predator, reveals only emptiness.

 _He's not here._ The thought echoes in a staggering crescendo, and for a moment, Ezio can do nothing but stare in disbelief at the empty workshop, as if it's betrayed him by being empty.  _But why would he-_ Ezio begins to thinks, but he cuts the thought short, because  _Leonardo can't be gone,_ and bolts for the docks.  _He's not gone, he's not,_ Ezio tells himself, the frantic panic only making it seem more like a lie, _he's not gone, he's just not here._

The dock workers that recognize him look momentarily puzzled to see him again, before forgetting him entirely. Ezio boards a ship and waits at the railing, staring down into the grey, churning water.

 _He can't be gone,_ he thinks, and it's all he can manage to wrap his head around. He can't explain why, exactly, can't explain why suddenly he's frantic, why suddenly, the whole world has spun around to revolve on this axel, around just Leonardo. There is nothing to worry about, no threats, no dangers, and yet, Ezio can't breathe.

 _He'll be there,_ Ezio fails to convince himself,  _he'll be there, he'll be there, he'll be there._ He drops his head into his hands and listens to the sound of the waves, heart hammering in his chest, like it's trying to fight its way out to tell him something he refuses to hear.

0o0o0o0o

Ezio arrives in Firenze, heart pounding and nerves tensed painfully.  _This is ridiculous,_ he tells himself, as he clings to self-control and forces himself not to run,  _I'm sure he's fine, wherever he is._

Of course, the question has never been whether or not Leonardo is  _fine._ Not knowing where Leonardo is, not being able to find him- it's like having his life's purpose torn away, left unbalanced and staggering, like failing at everything he's ever been meant to do, all at once. It makes no sense, that this would be have the ability to freeze everything for him, but all the same, Ezio can't deny any more than he can explain the fact that he's frantic with the need to know that Leonardo isn't suddenly absent from his world. Leonardo  _has_ to still be here, everything  _can't_ have changed while he was in Roma, he can't have lost everything because of all he's done, because if he lost Leonardo because of all he's done, he'd go back and wouldn't do any of it.

Leonardo has redefined him, and without Leonardo, there's the terror that he'd go back to the way he was. Ezio had been bent on vengeance, but standing over his last target's limp body, the howling voice of rage in his mind had been replaced by Leonardo's, telling him  _this won't bring them back,_ and telling him,  _don't you remember how you always respected Federico's ability to walk away from a nearly-finished fight? Remembering that will keep him closer than breaking his beliefs in his name._ Ezio had walked away.

He finally reaches the workshop door, and standing before it now, he closes his eyes and hopes.  _I need to find you,_ he thinks, and is suddenly struck with the need to break down sobbing, ridiculously hard to overcome,  _I just need to find you._

There is no answer when he knocks.

This is how his world will fall to pieces- slowly, devastatingly, already over while he discovers more and more broken pieces, and he won't understand why this will be what ruins him.


	2. Act II

There is one last place where Leonardo might be. This is Ezio's one last chance, and it's what might save him. Ezio leaves Firenze barely an hour after he'd arrived, doesn't see anything he passes. Leonardo might be at the villa – all Ezio can see is that room, the way it had looked the day he'd walked in and seen Leonardo painting in the corner. It had been like glimpsing something of a perfect world, walking in and seeing Leonardo, smiling and waiting for him, like discovering there was a star in the sky that was just his.

The journey to the villa is tediously long, and the time forces him to realize all the points at which everything started to go wrong, the things that may have led him here, here on a desperate search he doesn't quite understand, filled with a panic he hasn't ever felt. Ezio slides off a stolen horse when he reaches the first town and steals another to ride to the next; he's never let himself get attached to even a horse, never wanted to be attached to anything ever again, and maybe that's the first thing that went wrong. Ezio hadn't wanted to be close to anyone, never, because losing his father and brothers had torn the world apart. He'd become attached to Leonardo, entirely without meaning to or intending to, and if he didn't care, he wouldn't be here now, on a panicked search for his friend. But maybe that is wrong as well, because a life without Leonardo wouldn't be living at all. Leonardo has always been more perceptive than him, and after years, it's finally started to rub off on Ezio; he can tell that without Leonardo, nothing would mean anything.

He can't have lost Leonardo. It's more than denial, it's fact, because if he has, the whole world will be wrong. Somehow, the day his mother brought him to Leonardo's workshop to carry a box changed everything. Somehow, this is what has brought him to his knees.

It's absurd, that he can trace all that matters to him back to a box, the contents of which he can't remember.  _This is why I lived through their deaths,_ he's able to say,  _there was a box, and that brought me to Leonardo, and he's why._ It would be terribly ironic, for Leonardo to be the one to destroy him. After Ezio had lost his father and brothers, it had been Leonardo who kept him from falling to pieces. Because Leonardo was brilliant, he'd said  _for Claudia, for your mother,_ he'd said in the beginning, to keep Ezio strong,  _they're depending on you,_ because he knew Ezio wouldn't try to survive for himself. And then, because Leonardo was more brilliant than Ezio has words for, he'd said  _because it's what they would have wanted for you, and you have to do this, for yourself, for yourself._ Ezio had never truly understood Leonardo, but he'd long since learned to trust him completely, absolutely, and so deeply, it was like handing over his heart to someone else.

It felt almost dangerous. The entire time, it felt entirely too much like setting himself up for the same, like ensuring he would have someone to lose, someone to mourn over, someone to grieve for. He should have known- and some part of him surely did, denied it so well, this feels like a surprise.

And then, of course, Federico had known. He'd said  _they say art helps you find yourself,_ and then, some time later, he'd said  _maybe if you spend enough time at his workshop, you'll understand something about your life._ Federico always had endless advice for him, things Ezio has clung to all his life.  _You don't need it, you want it,_ he once said, when Ezio had said he'd  _needed_ to borrow Federico's finest shirt, years ago, and Ezio had said  _what's the difference. There's a big difference,_ Federico had said,  _needing is basic and material, wanting's when something means more than that, you want my shirt because you like it, not because you need just a shirt._ Ezio still doesn't understand everything, but he understands enough to realize that Federico knew Leonardo would come to mean a lot to Ezio.

He realized it only to further torment himself, just like always. If Federico were still here, Ezio could ask him what it was that he knew, but he's never going to be able to ask, never again, not anything. This is what it is, to be the younger brother of no one at all- questions that will never have answers, answers he will never understand, wanting to be like someone who's gone and instead having to be like he thinks Federico would have been.

Ezio arrives at the villa as the last vestiges of the golden sky turn dark. The memory of the last time he was here is so vibrant in his mind that, as he enters the villa, he swears it's real, that the sound of Leonardo's absent-minded humming and the strokes of a brush against canvas, and the clink of brushes in a jar of water, is all real. He runs into the room and stands, completely motionless, staring at the easel Leonardo left behind.

This is it, this was the last place, and suddenly, it all crushes down on Ezio, and he wants to break down, give up on everything in the world because he's lost his.

"Ezio?" Claudia says tentatively, rising from the desk and taking a few steps towards him. "You… looking for something?"

"No," Ezio says, and it's hard to hide that he's broken, but it's just like Leonardo said,  _be strong for Claudia._ "I- I was just-"

"Ezio," Claudia says, and she sounds like their mother used to, before she lost her husband and her two sons and her voice because of it; she's barely spoken since then, and it's like she was lost as well. Yet, here she is, her words in Claudia's voice. "I've never truly understood you," she says, "but there are some things I _do_ understand about you that even you don't understand." Ezio can't say anything, nothing at all, because maybe, there's something he doesn't know that everyone else does, something that could have saved him. "Leonardo left," she says, "I don't know why, and I thought you might, but you don't, do you?" Ezio just shakes his head no, staring at the blank easel. "Don't you get why you're looking for him?" she says, pleadingly. "A long time ago, Federico told me you didn't know, but Ezio, don't you understand why?"

 _I need him,_ he thinks he means to say, but what he says is "I want him."

This is how he discovers that he's in love with Leonardo- too late, because Leonardo has already left him, because without him, they've already had a spectrum of chances and he's missed every one, and he won't ever know what it would have been like, to truly belong to Leonardo.

This is how the tragedy does not end, but continues, this never-ending tragedy that has become all he is, missed chances and boats that have already sailed away, past the sunset and into the night, starless, hopeless, and tragic.


	3. Act III

Ezio does not like Roma. He tells himself it's because he misses the mystery of Venezia, the sun falling behind the churches of Firenze, but he's lying to himself. This is a city where he has never seen Leonardo, where there are no memories of him and no trace of him, and this is why Ezio hates it.

He spends a few days going over every inch of the city, in a futile effort he won't identify to himself. Of course, he finds nothing amidst the cold stone and cobbled streets, attempts to remember the twists of the street useless when he can't think about anything. He finds all the little art shops, lingers before all the paintings, as if this will tell him anything. It feels less useless than everything else he's done. There's a numbing tranquility to it, slow steps before a shop instead of his breathless, headlong dash between cities, the frantic yanking of door handles, although they both have the same underlying emotion- a crushing devastation that won't let him breathe.

If he could go back to any day before this, he'd do things differently. Federico said  _they say art helps you find yourself,_ and Ezio would have listened, would have followed art until it led him to Leonardo's workshop, where he'd found everything he lived for. If he could go back and rewrite everything, he'd never let himself end up here. He'd never see this lonely street, hear the echo of the footsteps of people around the corner, never be standing before the art merchant, looking at a painting and thinking only that it reminds him of the view from his room at home.

It reminds of him of it strongly, almost strangely, the same golden wash over the hills and the line of the stone that guards the villa, the same shape of the hills as they slope in and smooth out.

Reminds him of home, because this  _is_ his home. But even more, the name below the painting tells him _this is home._

He's found Leonardo.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

The art merchant tells him where Leonardo's workshop is, and by the time Ezio gets there, he's come up with dozens of options, what he should do, what he shouldn't say, everything. He's come up with so many explanations, confessions, everything he's ever wanted Leonardo to hear, but when Leonardo opens the door, Ezio can't remember any of it.

Leonardo's  _here,_ he's right in front of Ezio, and it's like having his heart handed back to him, like maybe he imagined all that pain before this.

"Ezio," Leonardo says, more surprised than Ezio would have expected, but maybe that's just because, to Ezio, hunting to the ends of the world for Leonardo seemed perfectly natural. Necessary, even.

Nonetheless, Leonardo lets Ezio into the workshop, watching him all the while as if completely bewildered, fascinated by what Ezio's next move might be. It should be unnerving, but Ezio has always been under Leonardo's scrutinizing gaze, the subject of a perpetual curiosity, something he shares with everything else conceivable. He's not special, he's had to remind himself with a bitterness that used to confuse him, Leonardo just wants to know everything about anything.

"You left," Ezio finally says, turning to look at Leonardo, who's just standing there, watching him. "You left- Venezia, Firenze, the villa."

"Sì," Leonardo agrees mildly.

"You didn't- you never told me anything."

Leonardo's still just looking at him, looks almost frustrated, doubtlessly because he doesn't understand anything Ezio is saying. Ezio can barely piece together his own thoughts, and stammering them out is nearly impossible, nowhere near as eloquent as all those words had sounded in his mind on the run over here.

"I assumed you'd be able to find me if you needed me," Leonardo says, strangely evenly, "and now, you have, so it was a logical assumption, was it not?"

" _Yes,_ but-" Ezio feels himself snatching for words that evade him, dissipating into the silence between him and Leonardo, "you didn't tell me you were leaving," he finishes, shoulders slumping. "I thought-" there's no reason he has to say it, he could never tell Leonardo anything, but as much as he wishes to keep silent, some part of him wants this more. "I thought you never wanted me to find you," he says quietly, shame burning his face.

"Ezio," Leonardo sighs out, and Ezio hopes for something, anything, to reassure him he's seen this completely wrong, he's fabricated everything, and it's his own frantic mind and shuddering panic that has made it seem like Leonardo didn't want him. "I think… there is some part of me that didn't want you to find me, yes."

This breaks Ezio, completely  _breaks_ him, and he can't say anything, nothing at all, because this, the most horrifying idea he's ever been faced with, is true. Leonardo has been hiding from him, the way the sun ducks from the moon when the night closes over the day.

"I'm sorry," Ezio stares at the floor, the uneven wood just like that of every other workshop Leonardo has had, where Ezio has always been able to find him. "I couldn't- without you, I couldn't-"

"Work?" Leonardo guesses, "I understand this, I'm more than willing to help, still-"

 _"Live,"_ Ezio insists, meets Leonardo's blue eyes and sees shock there. "For all that you observe me, Leonardo… I'm surprised that you missed the same thing I did."

"Missed what?"

"I had to find you," Ezio says softly, feeling like he's unraveling everything painstakingly slowly, watching pieces fall away, and maybe it's his heart, because the pain is unbearable, "because I love you."

He doesn't understand at first, why Leonardo starts to cry, or why he's suddenly in Ezio's arms holding him tight, doesn't understand until Leonardo's rush of words start to penetrate the haze he's in.

"-why I left, Ezio, because you've been breaking my heart since the first day I met you, it was- devastating, you'd never understand, unless- oh, Ezio, I didn't mean to-"

"It doesn't matter now," Ezio murmurs into Leonardo's curls, holding onto him like he's never going to let go, and in some ways, he's not. No matter what they both felt, the heartbreaking everything they shared without knowing it, it's over, it's  _over._ "You left, so I had to find you, and. I did. I had to. I didn't know that before, but- when you left, it was just-" he's never been able to explain any of this well, he's not like Leonardo. The way Leonardo smiles up at him, though, it's obvious. Leonardo sees the way Ezio found him and understands it for all the feelings that made Ezio search so desperately. As brilliant as Leonardo is with expression in ways everyone can understand, as unfathomable his actions, he can see all the expression in Ezio's blatant actions, clear in their meaning. He understands what Ezio was saying, when he fell apart upon finding Leonardo gone; he was saying  _I'm sorry,_ saying  _I love you._

"Don't leave without telling me again," Ezio breathes, "please, Leo."

"How could I now?" Leonardo kisses him, like nothing Ezio's ever felt, something that catches him and holds him up above all the pain he's ever felt. "I love you so much."

This is how Ezio is saved, suddenly and after so much suffering, closing the book on a tragedy and finding a new story. This is how he loves Leonardo, wholly and absolutely, because he is the entire world, rewriting everything Ezio has ever known.


End file.
